Mary’s Week 7
Welp, kids, today is the seventh week since my official training program has started.
Almost two months!
Though injury prone this season, I’m doing a fairly good job of making it through (and also, a pretty good job keeping record on this blog!)
I don’t have soccer this weekend (both Friday and Saturday are off for Valentine’s Day weekend….lame, right? I can’t think of a better way to spend Valentine’s Day than make my boyfriend watch me play soccer. But it is what it is….)
SO, no soccer this weekend and I have slacked adjusted my training schedule accordingly. Basically I just pushed my runs back by a day.
So instead of running 4 miles on Tuesday, I ran on Wednesday. Oh, and instead of four I only ran two, but who’s counting? 15:30 was the time on those puppies.
This morning I woke up bright and early to run my first mid-week 7 miler (this week marked the mid week runs rising from 3-6-3 to 4-7-4….yay).
I’m putting a picture now, because this feels text heavy:
The Rose Bowl, where we ran.
I ran part of the way with my friend Gonzo.
If not for Gonzo, I wouldn’t have made it out of bed this morning. Also, she wouldn’t have got up without me either….since her alarm didn’t go off and I woke her with a phone call.
Regardless, it really helps knowing (or at least thinking) someone’s waiting for you when it’s pitch black outside and you need to climb out of bed.
Gonzo ran the first 4 miles with me….I didn’t pace out each mile, but the first mile we ran in just under 8:30.
We slowed down for the next three and ran at a 9:45 pace.
For the final three miles, I picked it up and banged ‘em out at an 8:40 pace.
Total, I ran for just over an hour (about 64 minutes, give or take).
Also, one thing to note about the Rose Bowl is that each loop is somewhere between 3 miles and 3.1 miles. Which is cool…it means I’ll always run slightly over but never slightly under my scheduled miles. I think this will be a good thing in the long run. It will encourage me to pace myself a bit faster than I normally would shoot for, and also I’ll build up just a tad more mileage than expected….but the extra mileage is not that outrageous that I’ll be overdoing things.
(that was partly an excuse for my slow pacing today…haha)
Seven miles is not so bad when this is your view at the end of the trek.
PS - RIVER WATER!!??!! In LOS ANGELES??!!!!???
(we’ve been getting A LOT of rain).
It felt really good, I wasn’t even too terribly tired at the end of the run.
In addition to my running training, I’ve also started to incorporate lifting into my regimen. On Wednesday, along with my two miler, I did a quick arm workout (biceps, triceps, back/shoulders and lats) along with leg presses and calf raises.
Semi-pro soccer tryouts are in 30 days and I want to be fit to play (not just cardio-wise, but strength-wise).
One last picture:
what the view would have looked like had I collapsed at the end of my run (which I did not).
On the schedule for the rest of the week: a 4 miler and a 14 miler.
For cross-training, I’m thinking a Valentines Day hike with the boy.
